Recently I joined my longtime friend Melanie Benson for a conversation on her show, Growth Fuel Live.
Melanie and I met around 2005. We stayed in touch over the years and recently reconnected on Substack. That says something about visibility on its own. Staying present online can reconnect you with people you knew years ago and create opportunities you couldn’t have predicted.
Our conversation focused on a question I’ve been thinking about a lot:
What can you build with AI that lets someone use your expertise?
I’ve used AI for research, writing, brainstorming, editing, repurposing and planning. More recently, I’ve been experimenting with simple tools that help people solve a problem, make a decision, or get a small result.
That gives someone a chance to experience your work in a different way.
A small result can create a stronger connection
Think about the last PDF or ebook you downloaded. Did you read the whole thing?
I have plenty sitting in folders I meant to read and never did. An interactive tool asks for participation. Someone answers a few questions, enters information, makes a choice, or follows a short process. Then they get a result based on what they gave the tool.
During my conversation with Melanie, I put it this way:
“When somebody accomplishes something based on something you’ve given them... they can say, ‘Okay, this worked. Maybe I want to work with that person.’”
That’s where I see the visibility opportunity. You’re giving someone a chance to experience how you think before they hire you.
The result can be small. They might identify a gap, make a decision, choose a next step, create a piece of content, assess an offer, or prepare for a coaching session.
A useful result that takes a few minutes can tell someone a lot about your approach.
Start with one problem, one action, one outcome
This was the advice I kept coming back to during the interview:
One problem. One action. One outcome.
Start with a problem people already bring to you.
Maybe clients repeatedly ask:
Which marketing channel should I focus on?
Is this offer ready to sell?
What should I work on next?
Why isn’t my content bringing inquiries?
What should I fix on my website first?
Pick one question.
Then decide what action the person will take inside the tool and what useful result they should get. Your first version might have 5 questions and give someone one recommendation.
That’s enough for a first test.
AI will happily suggest 14 extra features, 6 reports, a dashboard, charts, email follow-up and several things you never asked for. I’ve learned to say no and keep going back to the result I wanted the person to get.
Use this filter before you build anything
An idea can sound interesting and still be a poor first project.
Before spending time on it, check your idea against these 3 questions:
Do I already know this subject well?
Your first tool should come from experience you already have. You shouldn’t have to research an entirely new area to make it useful.Can someone get a useful result in a few minutes?
Look for a small decision, assessment, recommendation, or output. The person should be able to see what they gained from using it.Does the result connect to work I already do?
A tool makes more sense for your business when the next step connects naturally to your services, products, newsletter, course, or other work.
Melanie shared Lori Young’s offer analyzer as a good example. Someone can use the analyzer, learn something about their offer, and then recognize where they may need coaching or strategic help.
The tool has a job. It gives the person a useful starting point.
What could this look like in your business?
Sometimes the hardest part is seeing how an idea applies to your own work.
Here are a few examples:
Business coach:
Answer a short series of questions and get a recommendation for the business priority that deserves your attention this month.
Consultant:
Complete a readiness assessment before starting a project and get a list of areas that need attention first.
Copywriter:
Paste in a sales page and get feedback on where the message may be unclear or missing information.
Visibility strategist:
Answer several questions about your current marketing and find the area where your visibility needs attention.
Course creator:
Answer a few questions and find the program or resource that best fits what you need right now.
You could create the same kind of experience around pricing, client intake, content planning, website readiness, offer development, event preparation or another task you already guide clients through.
The useful question is: What small decision or result do people regularly need your help with?
Your judgment stays in charge
This may have been my strongest point in the conversation.
AI can write code, suggest questions, find errors, and propose features. You decide whether those ideas belong in the tool.
When I’m working on something over several days or weeks, I regularly ask AI questions such as:
What did we originally decide this tool should do?
What have we added since then?
Which pieces still matter?
What remains unfinished?
Has this become more complicated than it needs to be?
Those questions bring my own judgment back into the process.
Your experience with clients matters here. You already know which questions need to be asked, where people get stuck and what information changes your recommendation.
That knowledge belongs in the tool.
Make it work before you make it pretty
This lesson took me a little longer to learn.
I like things to look good. I can spend way too much time thinking about the name, colors, images, layout and final report.
Get the function working first. Can someone enter information? Does the tool process it correctly? Does the result make sense? Would you give that recommendation to a client?
Once those pieces work, you can spend time on presentation.
My Visibility Momentum Map started very small. Beta testers gave me plenty to think about. Some of their feedback sent me back to parts of the tool I thought were finished.
People use things differently than you expect. Testing shows you where the gaps are and which parts need more work.
Look at work you’ve already created
You probably have several possible tool ideas sitting inside your existing work.
Look through your articles, courses, worksheets, client intake process, presentations and frequently asked questions. Pay attention to the steps you repeat and the decisions you regularly help people make.
My 15-Minute Content Shortcut came from an article. That idea later became part of a larger mini-course.
The same thing can happen with a framework you teach or a process you repeat with clients.
Ask yourself:
What is one step I regularly walk a client through that they could complete before we work together?
There may be a useful tool sitting inside your answer.
Try this prompt to develop your first idea
Once you have a possible idea, take it to ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini and use this as a starting prompt:
I help [type of client] with [problem].
One step I regularly help them with is [step].
I want to create a very small interactive AI tool that helps them complete this step and get [result].
Suggest the simplest working version I could create.
Keep it focused on one problem, one action and one outcome.
Do not add extra features.
Tell me:
What information the user needs to provide
What the tool should do with that information
What result the user should receive
The smallest number of steps needed to make this work
Treat the response as a starting point. Read every suggestion and decide whether it belongs.
You know your clients. AI doesn’t.
A few people I want to acknowledge
A lot of my own experimentation has come from watching what other smart business owners are creating.
Ellen Britt, PA, Ed.D., PHom was one of the first people who made me look at AI building differently. I saw the sophisticated tools she was creating and asked whether she had made them on a vibe-coding platform. She told me she was working directly with AI and VS Code. I wanted to learn how she was doing it. Ellen and I have since taught 2 hands-on AI app creation programs together.
Karen Spinner created Carousel Bot. I volunteered to beta test it after meeting Karen on Substack, and I now use it regularly. Every time I use her tool, I think of Karen. That is a pretty good example of visibility through something useful.
Kim Doyal created a process using a Claude Skill and Gemini Gem to create sketchnotes. I can take an article through her process and get a visual I can use with my content within minutes.
Lori Young, a member of Melanie’s Rising Tide Collective, created an offer analyzer. Melanie shared Lori’s example during our conversation. Someone can use the tool, learn something about their offer, and see where they may need more support.
I mentioned the creator behind AI Meets Girlboss, too. Her weekly Tuesday visual prompts have become something I look for. I’ve used them, shared the results, and eventually became a paid subscriber.
Each of these examples shows what happens when people can do something with your ideas. They remember where the experience came from.
What you can do next
Set aside 20 minutes and start with one question your clients ask you repeatedly.
Then:
Decide what small result would be useful to them.
Choose one action they could take to get that result.
Run the idea through the 3-question filter above.
Use the starter prompt to sketch the smallest working version.
Remove anything that makes the project larger than it needs to be.
Create a rough version and give it to a few people.
Pay attention to what they do, where they stop and what they ask.
You don’t have to decide immediately whether your idea will become a free tool, a paid product, part of a program or something you use with clients.
Create enough to learn whether people find it useful.
One more thing we talked about
Near the end of the interview, Melanie asked me about Substack’s AI detector, Pangram. This article covers the controversy and has info for opting out if you live in the EU or a state that has digital privacy laws.
I had opinions.
My view is pretty simple. I care whether something I read gives me something useful. I use AI in my own work for research, brainstorming, editing, citations, visuals and plenty of other tasks. Here’s my AI Policy.
An AI detector doesn’t change how I decide whether someone’s work is worth reading. I live in California and will be sending an opt-out request to Substack.
You decide how AI fits into your work. Your judgment, experience, and choices shape what comes out of it.
The same applies when you start creating tools. Pick one useful problem, give someone one useful result, and pay attention to what you learn.
Want to see a simple AI build in practice?
My free 15-Minute Content Shortcut grew out of an article I wrote about getting more visibility from the content you’ve already created.
It gives you a simple way to take one piece of long-form content and find more ways to use it, without starting from scratch every time.
It’s a good example of the idea Melanie and I talked about: take something you already know, pull out one useful piece and give people a way to put it into action.
Try the 15-Minute Content Shortcut here
What part of your expertise could become a small tool someone can use?
